October 26th, 2008

Well, it has been 1 month and 6 days since I arrived in Red Bay, AL and the Tiffin repair folks just started work on our motor home last Wednesday. Kathy and I had figured October would be a good month to get here because the kids would be back to school, etc., and boy were we wrong! October is one of the 2 busiest months here as all of the snow birds are heading for winter quarters and stopping here to let Tiffin Motors fix all of their warranty things. Last weekend there were over 120 motor homes here waiting to be worked on and many of them were parked out on an abandoned runway dry camping (which means no power, water, or sewer hook-up).

There are over 50 RV's looking down this run way. We are the 1st on the right.

We met two very nice couples -- Mark & Sue, and Connie & Manuel -- we had a couple of dinners with them, learned how to play Mexican Train dominoes, and taught them how to make and drink Old Fashioneds. Mark & Sue are having a 2009 Tiffin Phaeton manufactured just for them -- it's a 40-footer (ours is 34 ft.) and they are following it's building process very carefully. Just two days ago it went in for it's painting -- and we had a chance to tour the "paint plant" that Tiffin has -- there were over twenty motor homes in there -- all in various stages of painting!

Connie and Manuel have a lovely Phaeton too -- it has four slide-outs, so had lots of room for the six of us to party. There are many nice people here at "Camp Red Bay" -- which is what the Tiffin owners call our campground -- and we meet up with folks daily when we end up in the "Customer Lounge" waiting for our coaches to be worked on.

Red Bay's town border is on the Mississippi state line and one has to drive 30 to 50 miles to get anything but fried cat fish, grits, hush puppies, Georgia Fries (they have lots of cheese and bacon bits on them); however, there is a Mexican Restaurant here and the food isn't bad. We can't get a drink or buy booze in town as this is a dry county so on the road we go. I have driven to Tupelo, MS to get prescriptions and that all-important booze. Tupelo is the birthplace of Elvis Presley.

Kathy got back here 2 weeks ago today and both Tiger and I were so glad to see her. Although, it was very quiet, that's another story, and I wasn't subjected to loooong lists of things to do each day. Our parking spot for the last 4+ weeks is on an old airport runway with over 100 other motor homes. About 30 feet behind us are residential homes and one of then has 6 or 7 coon dogs that bay and howl for a good part of the night -- often after 1 AM. Then at 5 AM the local rooster starts crowing and wakes us up. Sometimes the rooster gets in front of the dog pens and teases them to the point where all of the dogs are howling at the top of their lungs. Tiffin says the dogs keep people from staying too long! We use our ear plugs to sleep!!

Our motor home has had a water leak since we got it and although we had gone several places to have it fixed, the repair people were never able to find it and take care of it. We had a list of 20 other things to be fixed -nothing serious - but the floor turned out to be really bad. $7,300 bad so we are currently staying 27 miles from Red Bay in Russellville, AL in a hotel while they tear our whole tile floor up, dry it out and replace it. Fortunately it is covered by insurance and they should be finished by the middle or end of next week and then we get to leave.

We did find 2 places of interest so far. The National Coon Dog Cemetary and, because this is hunting country, a place to get your deer processed. The deer processing place has the motto, " You Whack 'em, We Pack 'em!" I have attached photos of both places.

The National Coon Dog Cemetary started in 1937 where a gentleman buried his prize coon dog at the exact place where he treed his last raccoon. There are now over 200 coon dogs buried there and recently they had a burial with 200 people in attendance, including human pall bearers and dog pall bearers. They have a committee that screens each application to have their dog buried there and they have to be pedigreed coon dogs. They don't want any poodles or lap dogs to contaminate these hallowed grounds. It's quite a place. The gravesites even have artificial flower bouquets on them!

When we leave here we are going to Hilton Head Island for a couple of weeks and while in that area we will visit Charleston, SC and Savannah, GA.

More to come......there ain't a lot of things to do here!